Color and Design Matter. So Does Optimism.

Show Us Your Wall What goes into James Little’s work also goes into the art collection he and his wife have amassed. “Coming from my background, which was a very segregated upbringing in Tennessee, I felt that abstraction reflected the best expression of self-determination and free will,” said the artist James Little, 67. “I have this affinity for color, design, structure and optimism. ” Those qualities apply to both the paintings he collects and his own works, which are characterized by hard-edged geometry and shifting colors, with compositions strongly informed by jazz.

The Garment District apartment where Mr. Little lives with his wife, Fatima Shaik, a writer, is hung with dynamic abstractions by artists including Toshio Iwasa, Stanley Whitney, Thornton Willis and Stewart Hitch. A woven handmade paper piece by Al Loving was a trade between friends who met when Mr. Little arrived in the city in 1976 with a new M.

F. A. from Syracuse University. “Al knew everybody in the art world,” he said.

Their work was exhibited in a 1977 group show at Just Above Midtown alongside that of other African-American abstract artists. Through gifts and trades with Harold Hart, a mentor who was once director of the Martha Jackson Gallery, Mr. Little also acquired several vivid abstract paintings by Alma Thomas. Mr.

Little said he regrets that Ms. Thomas, who died in 1978, fell ill before his planned trip to Washington to meet her. Mr. Little recently completed his largest work to date, a commission for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Commuters at Jamaica Station will pass through his 85-foot-long environment made of multicolored glass panels in a prismatic design. And in November, his two-toned black paintings will be paired with sculptures by Louise Nevelson at Rosenbaum Contemporary in Boca Raton, Fla. “I don’t really follow trends,” said Mr. Little, as can be seen in the couple’s collection of more than 100 works — ranging from a Salvador Dalí print to “Money Lures,” an object made of shredded money by Richard Mock — displayed in the city and at their homes upstate and in New Orleans.